Emergency, p.1
Emergency, page 1
Emergency
Last Stand
Book Six
Blaze Ward
Knotted Road Press
Contents
Scene One
Scene Two
Scene Three
Scene Four
Scene Five
Scene Six
Scene Seven
Scene Eight
Scene Nine
Scene Ten
Scene Eleven
Scene Twelve
Scene Thirteen
Scene Fourteen
Scene Fifteen
Scene Sixteen
Scene Seventeen
Scene Eighteen
Scene Nineteen
Scene Twenty
Read More
About the Author
Also by Blaze Ward
About Knotted Road Press
Scene One
Tessa had just joined her husband up on the flight deck of their little freighter, enjoying a few moments alone as they came out of jump at Ermoor. Not quite the middle of nowhere, as the old joke went, but you could see it from there.
They were hauling a load of canned and jarred foodstuffs from Newhall. Things gathered from some of her contacts, some of Bao Li’s, and some of McGeorge’s. Stuff that was mundane back at Astoria, but exotic at Ermoor, where the climate was different enough, as was the flora. Hopefully, they’d be able to swap up for the same sorts of stuff headed home, so that this looked like nothing more than a boring cargo run by a broke and desperate freight company.
Y’all ignore those three boxes of stuff hidden in the side compartment in the cargo bay, ya hear?
“You have a smile on your face,” Fin glanced over.
“Thinking about things,” Tessa replied. “It would be nice to get back to this sort of job. Quiet. Peaceful. Nobody shooting at anybody or even threatening to. Just good, old-fashioned smuggling of illegal materials from one world to another without bothering to pay excise fees or affix tax stamps.”
“Momma warned me you’d lead me astray,” he grinned.
Tessa laughed out loud. His parents had so hated the idea of their only child marrying one of them, and one so far below his station, that they’d threatened to cut him out of their will and leave everything to his cousins.
Neither of them knew if his parents had gone through with it, because they’d cut off all communications when they received an invitation to the wedding
“What?” Tessa mock-demanded. “Good, honest thieving not the life you imagined?”
It was his turn to laugh.
“Long as I get to fly and there’s some gratuitous nudity and fooling around thrown in, I’m good,” he said.
She grinned back. Rose and stepped across the small deck to kiss him. Just ’cause.
The alarm buzzer going off right over her head caused Tessa to rear back and slam her skull into the overhead panel.
Ouch.
She staggered back to her seat and sat, blinking away the tears.
“Vilgi Clipper, this is Last Stand,” Fin was saying, microphone in one hand. “We’re above and across from you about thirty degrees right now. State the nature of your emergency.”
At least he was sharp. Tessa knew she’d have a lump for a while, and a loud ringing in her ears that felt as though it was just shy of a mild concussion.
Nothing she hadn’t done before. She could work this way.
“Last Stand, we’ve got a fire in the engine room,” a female voice replied, modulated a little by cheap hardware at both ends.
Nobody ever bothered replacing or upgrading comm gear until it finally broke. Including her.
“Vilgi Clipper, do you need to evacuate?” Fin asked sharply.
“Maybe,” came the words. “We’re fighting it, but it’s already starting to spread. Not sure I can keep it contained, short of venting to space, and I have seventeen souls aboard, plus a cat. Can you help?”
“Affirmative, Vilgi Clipper,” Fin said, glancing over at her for a nod, though he’d have gone right ahead without her. “Calculating a jump on your vector now.”
Law of the spaceways said that you dropped everything to help when someone had a problem. Smart people didn’t need laws. Might be you next time, so you wanted everyone remembering that you came to save someone else.
There were a few folks out there that she knew Fin would simply ignore their call and let them explain it all to whichever god took the most pity on them afterwards, but that was a personal thing.
Folks that she’d have shot, given the opportunity.
But Vilgi Clipper weren’t snakes anywhere on her list.
Or Fin’s, from the reaction.
“What do you need?” she asked, still grinning inside because usually it was her giving orders and him asking those same words.
“We’ll come out close,” he replied, typing furiously on three different boards as he lined up scanners and generators. Then opened the comm aft. “Auntie, got an emergency short jump in two minutes. Ship in trouble, deeper in orbit. Nobody around but us unless someone lifts from the surface. Need you in a suit.”
“On it,” Marusya replied.
She was only blood relation to Tessa, and Tessa’s last living relative anywhere close, but everyone on the ship called her Auntie as often as anything else.
Fin turned to her, grim-faced.
“You and anyone who can help need to be in suits,” he said simply. “Can’t vent the cargo bay to space without more troubles than I think we’re facing right now, unless those people skimped on space suits and I’ve got to deal with people who can’t walk vacuum right now.”
“I’ll put Wyatt aboard Abigail’s shuttle with her,” Tessa said. “They can go after strays if we need.”
“Good idea,” Fin said. “Got a bad feeling about this one.”
She nodded. And agreed.
Hell of a way to arrive at Ermoor.
Scene Two
Abigail had slept in this morning, expecting a bit of a busy schedule later in the day when they arrived at Ermoor. Not a place she’d been yet, so she didn’t necessarily have contacts on her rolodex.
At the same time, she was a Player. A trained bard, cook, and raconteur, so her skills would be in demand somewhere. And if there weren’t any rich, fancy folks around to hire her for an evening’s entertainment, she could always take over a local hall and put on a show, letting people kick a Jiao into a common pot. Or even a fen.
Part of her life was carrying news from place to place. Didn’t have to be personal when she did. Lots of the smaller worlds appreciated her just having an evening of storytelling, to break the monotony of farming life.
Her hatch to the ship was open, so she heard heavy boots stomping up the stairs. Sounded like Wyatt, but why he was making so much noise confused her. That man could move as silent as a mouse when he wanted.
Ergo, he was warning her he was coming.
Oh! Probably wanted to make sure she was dressed.
Abigail grinned. Wyatt had never so much as made an off-color comment to her or around her, though she knew he liked females. She’d seen him in town from time to time, enjoying himself.
Still, it would be rude to throw off all her clothes and be sitting on her favorite couch nude when he arrived.
Not that she didn’t think she’d do it to him sometime, just to watch his face turn beet red.
She put down her Personal Analytical Engine and released the tension on the spring, smiling as he appeared at her hatch. She was in her sleeping robes still, so covered enough to any company.
He carried a lifesuit in one hand and his black rifle Doomripper in the other.
“What is it?” she asked, immediately uncurling her legs to rise.
“Emergency with another ship in orbit,” Wyatt replied, stepping in and delicately resting his rifle off to one side, even as he tossed his suit on the floor. “Fin’s gonna rendezvous after a jump, then wants us birddogging possible strays while he moves to dock.”
Abigail nodded, then smiled, but only inside where Wyatt wouldn’t see it. Her suit was under the couch she had been sitting on, and to put it on, she’d have to strip nude. Right now. In front of the man.
He slipped out of his own jacket, turned a little sideways so he wasn’t staring at her as she untied her robe and let it fall to the floor, with other layers quickly following.
An emergency was no time for a burlesque. Even as much as both of them might laugh at such a thing. Instead, she tossed everything to one side and knelt down to pull out her suit, cataloging everything in here that she needed to confirm in the room was locked or latched, if she had to kill life support and vent the middle cabin to deep space.
Wyatt would remain here. She’d be forward flying, but would need her suit on, in case she had to help him.
They’d never done this anywhere but in training drills, but today was exactly why you practiced such things. No questions needed to fly as they both started slipping into their suits and attaching plumbing.
Time to go be heroes.
Scene Three
Brianna had woken up this morning almost feeling sane. Had even recognized the woman in the mirror, which wasn’t always a given, though these days it was getting to be far more common than it had been.
Part of that was her sister finding a couple of medications that helped untangle what those men done to her when they’d decided to scramble her brain so they could turn her into an assassin.
Presley had paid a stupendous amount of money in bribes, then given up her entire life to rescue Nataliya and spirit them both to safety.
Now they presented as Constanz and Brianna McLaren, because too many people would be looking for a pair of sisters, rather than a couple posing as husband and wife.
Brianna was sitting in the common room forward with a mug of tea and one of the new Personal Analytical Engines that Auntie and Tessa had stolen at Bernadette. She looked up when Tessa came running into the room and paused enough to make eye contact.
“I need you with me now,” Tessa said, turning and heading aft with barely a break in her stride.
Brianna unspooled the spring and slipped the machine into a holder as she rose, chasing the captain aft.
Constanz and Laney were in the kitchen, at opposite corners of the dining room table, both writing in notebooks.
“There’s been an emergency on another ship, here in orbit,” Tessa announced. “Fin’s bringing us in to rescue crew and passengers. I need all three of you in suits immediately. Won’t know how things organize until we get there, but Abigail and Wyatt will be in her shuttle. Marusya and I will cross over. Might bring one of you along, while the other two remain here and get folks aboard, keeping them in the cargo bay and the kitchen for now. We’ll override the locks to everything else except the bathroom.”
“I should come with you, Captain,” Constanz said immediately.
“Does your cover hold up to being a medical expert?” Tessa replied. “A doctor? I don’t know what Constanz McLaren told folks before he came aboard Last Stand, and these will be strangers. Worse, if we do rescue them, folks will put us on the news.”
“It’s better than letting innocent people die,” Constanz said coldly. “I took an oath. Being an outlaw and a fugitive doesn’t change that.”
“Okay,” Tessa nodded, turning to her and Laney.
“You two are in charge here,” Tessa continued. “I may send Constanz back with wounded to treat, so you figure out how and where we go about turning someplace around here into a hospital if we need.”
Brianna nodded and fell in as everyone raced aft to the locker where all the suits were stored. Wyatt was already climbing the stairs to where Abigail docked, suit in one hand and rifle in the other, though Brianna had no idea what good that man thought a gun might be in this situation.
But then again, it might simply serve as a security blanket. She had vague memories of something similar, back when she’d been someone else a lifetime ago.
Quickly, they all stripped, Constanz climbing into a suit that had originally fit Fin, then been internally modified by Auntie for the fact that Constanz was only a male in dress. Different plumbing fixtures, but the suits tended to be externally gendered, so Fin had insisted that Constanz needed to present as male, even in a suit.
Because she and Brianna had been adopted by this crew. Taken in as strays and protected, when the bounties on their heads were utterly fantastical.
Brianna was first done, but she had been trained to make it entirely automatic and those skills had not faded. Laney was a few beats slower, then Tessa. Constanz was last, but he took care at each step to confirm everything was correct before moving on.
Surgical training kicking in. Plus the fact that he didn’t have a lot of experience in vacuum and zero gravity to know what to do if something went wrong.
Ergo, make it all right first.
Tessa looked at each of them with a hard, professional eye. All of them held helmets in their hands now, poised for action.
“I would like to leave the cargo bay pressurized,” she said. “You will decide when that needs to change and communicate it to everyone else.”
“Understood,” Brianna said automatically.
Laney probably had the most experience with this sort of situation, so Brianna nodded to the older woman.
Laney nodded back.
Behind them, Auntie came running down the stairs, taking two at a time with one hand on the rail and the other holding a carpetbag Brianna knew was filled with tools.
“Fin, lock everything down,” Tessa said into the intercom.
Tessa, Auntie Maru, and Constanz snapped their helmets into place and stepped into the airlock.
Scene Four
Constanz didn’t want to say he moved diffidently, but in his mind, his hands were already inside someone’s skull. You had to be delicate then, not tugging on anything you hadn’t precisely identified beforehand, then moving things exactly as far as necessary to get the job done.
And no more.
He followed the Captain into the airlock and waited, with Marusya standing right behind him, almost touching.
“Testing communications on channel three,” Captain Sladek said.
“Clear at my end,” Constanz replied.
“I’m good,” Marusya noted.
“Six and zero here,” Fin said, noting perfect signal and no static.
“Shuttle preparing to undock,” Abigail added.
“We are ready to go,” Tessa said.
“Coming up on their aft port corner now,” Fin began a running commentary that Constanz found useful, blind here in the small airlock. “Not seeing any external evidence of damage. No, strike that. Got a gouge of some sort leading to a hole. Looks like maybe a small rock nailed them at high speed, cutting a line then penetrating right at the end. Blackened around the edges and I do have vapor emerging. Call it a hit to the port engine. Ship is stable on her gyros right now, so I am sliding over to the airlock. Tessa, go ahead to depressurize and open your outer hatch. Looks like a standard mating configuration over there, so you should be able to telescope your side out about a meter and connect. I’m on thrusters and gyros now but will shut down when you contact hull.”
“Understood, Fin,” Captain Sladek replied.
Constanz watched her push a few buttons. A siren whooped three times, matching with flashing red strobes at both ends of the short tunnel.
He felt the skin of his suit begin to tighten slightly as the air in here got sucked out, leaving them close to vacuum.
Constanz found the controls on his left wrist and dialed the humidity down another ten percent and the temperature down two degrees from default. Surgery had always left him feeling like he was having a hot flash, even as young as he’d been. Best to go ahead and settle things now, rather than later when he might have a hand inside someone’s thoracic cavity.
The outside hatch opened with a slight tug as the last bits of air escaped, and Constanz found himself facing the side of another starship.
In deep space.
“You all right?” Marusya asked.
“I’ve never done something like this before,” he said brightly, turning to face her.
Marusya rolled her eyes.
“Hopefully, it won’t get to be old hat,” the woman said. “Have you had much trauma experience?”
“Not first line,” he said carefully. “Someone coming in for the kinds of surgery I specialized in had usually been prepared for weeks or even months ahead of time, though there were a few cases where a routine physical turned up surprises and we had to get someone into surgery the next day. I’ve not spent much time in an emergency room since I completed my residency. And that was on Falorea in one of the nicest hospitals, so we didn’t get a lot of space-related cases.”
“Burns and vacuum exposure are the most common risk in a situation like this,” Captain Sladek explained. “Smoke inhalation with semi-toxic chemicals, which is why we’re going in suited up. Depending on that asteroid hit, their engineer might have been disabled, or they might have been able to keep it contained. Won’t know until we step across. Auntie has cloth tape that we use to repair machines. Works just as well holding people together long enough to sew things up.”
“I understand, Captain,” Constanz nodded, turning forward again. “Triage immediately, followed by treatment as determined by case load.”
